


Stupid / Ridiculous / Love

by Shleemaree



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Light Angst, Mass Effect 3: Citadel, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-01
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-07-28 13:51:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7643071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shleemaree/pseuds/Shleemaree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Commander Rafaela Rodriguez Shepard spends her shore leave contemplating her relationship with Garrus Vakarian, talking shit with her best friends, and reluctantly dealing with the fact that even the frigging Savior of the Citadel has basic human insecurities to deal with. Stretching my fic feelers with this guy; it's been a second, y'all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stupid / Ridiculous / Love

She’s thought on more than one occasion that maybe she’s getting a little too comfortable here. Shore leave hasn’t exactly been the pinnacle of relaxation like some people had thought - like she’d secretly hoped - but she definitely prefers the quality of her problems sealed in this quietly weird, homey, little bubble as opposed to the ones lurking just out of sight but never out of mind. Of course someone’s trying to kill her; she wouldn’t be Raffi Shepard if someone wasn’t trying to kill her. That’s just enough of an issue to ground her. The fact that it’s an actual clone of herself is just one more unbelievable modifier in the story of her life. It’s almost funny. It definitely doesn’t keep her awake at night like the strange halos of the Illusive Man’s eyes burning behind her own eyelids do.

 

So yeah, she needs to navigate a couple of shootouts, and sure, she can’t let her guard down completely, but when can she ever? This is probably as good as it’s ever going to get. It’s better than anything she ever thought she’d get again, if she’s being honest with herself. It’s been a long time since she allowed herself even this much… normalcy? Is it normalcy? Maybe. This might be what normal people do, how civilians live. Minus the clone, anyway. But Raffi isn’t sure. It’s been a very long time since she’s been a civilian, and she’s not sure if she’s ever been normal. And in this world, she doubts there’s a standard left for what normal is any more.

 

Whatever this is, it feels different.

 

Whatever this is, it makes her feel… equal.

 

Yeah.  _ Equal _ . That’s what it is. She doesn’t feel like the commander here. She feels like a friend. Like a confidant. Like a girlfriend. Like maybe somebody else can carry the weight of the damn world for a minute, because her shoulders are getting pretty tired.

It makes her think.

 

She’s lying on the couch with her head resting in Garrus’s lap, pillowed on her rolled-up N7 hoodie. She might’ve been napping, which blows her mind, because sleeping has become a chore, a calculated task, a risk weighed against all the other possible dangers that buzz around her like wasps. It’s planned. It never just  _ happens _ any more. But her eyelids feel heavy when she cracks them open, and it takes her a few seconds to realize that she can feel the gentle pressure of a blunt talon tip tracing over her back.

 

He’s doing it idly.  _ Idly _ . Like he doesn’t even realize it. And that’s another blow to her already off-kilter, sleep-addled brain, because Raffi can count on one closed fist the number of times she’s seen Garrus Vakarian do anything without an almost infuriating amount of overthought. It took nothing less than the absolute certainty of their own impending deaths to get the jerk to quit his extensive  _ research _ and actually test out anything he’d learned.

 

Not that Raffi is officially complaining about that, not exactly, because the research turned out to be way, way more beneficial than she’d ever imagined it could be, but still.

 

She realizes that it isn’t just her. That Garrus is different here, too. 

 

It’s not like they’ve ever been a secret; even if these people hadn’t been her closest friends, the Normandy is only so big, and people are nosy (Tali) and big-mouthed (Joker). But business was business, and they  _ did  _ all have to work together, whatever else was going on behind closed doors, so they’d tried - mostly - to keep it strictly professional in public. And on top of that, Garrus has never been what Raffi would consider confident about their relationship, which she finds pretty insane. Where everything else is concerned, Garrus is the living embodiment of confidence, and in her shamelessly biased opinion, there’s no reason he shouldn’t be. He has  _ everything _ to be confident about. He’s a brilliant tactician, he has a knack for reaching the right - if difficult to swallow - remedy for almost any situation, and he’s the second-best shot on the Normandy. Hell, it’s his confidence that eventually taught her that a single, well-considered “with all due respect, sir, I have to do this” is worth a thousand blind “yes, sir”s. She trusts him implicitly with her life on an everyday basis, and it’s not just her - it’s everyone. Everyone feels safer knowing that Garrus Vakarian has got their back.

 

But when it comes to her - her as his girlfriend, not her as his commander - it’s like he forgets that he’s one of the best soldiers and most valuable assets anyone in the galaxy could ever hope to have. It’s like he forgets that from their very first discussion about Saren, he and Raffi understood each other on a molecular level, long before she even fully realized that she could  _ be _ attracted to a turian. There’s a cautiousness to him when they’re alone that she’s never seen anywhere else. In the middle of a gunfight, Garrus will weigh the odds and then tackle her off the edge of a cliff without a second thought rather than letting her take a shot he thinks will cause too much damage, that her barriers can’t handle. It’s happened before (and he’d been right, of course, and Raffi had limped away with a sprained ankle and some bruised ribs instead of a gunshot wound that Garrus still insists would have been way too close to some vital organs for anyone’s comfort). And yet, it took her almost an hour to convince that same guy that she didn’t care if she scratched her face on his mandible or cut her tongue on his teeth, kissing was a thing that humans did, and goddammit,  _ she wanted to do that with him _ (she does eventually cut her tongue on his teeth, and it is incredibly annoying and incredibly worth it).

 

He steps way more carefully around her than he needs to. He’s off-center, he’s uncertain, he’s almost painfully, absolutely, endearingly  _ awkward _ . And that’s not a word she ever thought she’d use to describe him before all of this started.

 

And okay, sure, maybe she exacerbates that a little bit with her teasing (“Vakarian, does this hoodie make my waist look supportive?” she’d asked very loudly after bursting into the battery, and there had been the clinking thud of a metal instrument hitting the metal floor, followed by a short silence, followed by a very quiet, resonant “all humans are terrible, and you are their horrible, awful queen”), but she can’t help that. Their bizarre and wonderful romance is an addition to their equally bizarre and wonderful friendship, not a replacement for it, and she won’t stop teasing Garrus any more than he’ll ever stop sassing her.

 

But here, over the past few days, something has shifted. Something has eased. Something has fit into place somehow, and Garrus has been more open with touches and more quietly secure in compliments than she’s ever seen him before. She’s lost track of how many times he’s called her “my girlfriend.” Out loud. To other people. She’s lost track of how many “I love you’s” they’ve traded. That’s the big one, she thinks, the “I love you” part. Because they  _ do _ , of course they do, but they haven’t spent a whole lot of time saying it. Maybe they don’t feel like they need to, that it’s an obvious, unspoken period at the end of every sentence. Maybe it’s that they’re both very good, very intelligent soldiers, but at the end of the day, they’re both utterly clueless about how to have a relationship with someone else. Maybe it’s a little bit of both. 

 

She’s been lying there and thinking for maybe twenty minutes before she notices that the television is tuned to some turian movie riddled with really gorgeous ships going down in flames, but Spanish subtitles are ticketing across the bottom of the screen.

 

“What are you watching?” she finally asks, her voice thick with sleep.

 

“Have a good nap?”

 

“I wasn’t asleep. I was just resting my eyes.”

 

“Uh-huh.”

 

“I’m in a constant state of vigilance. I don’t sleep any more. Some Cerberus thing. Did I not mention this to you?”

 

“Yeah, I don’t think so. I’ll make a note for next time you’re passed out snoring on my leg. It’s just elaborate trickery.”

 

Raffi bristles a little, comes much closer to a pout than she’s interested in admitting. “I don’t  _ snore _ .”

 

“Sure, honey. Sure you don’t.”

 

“Seriously, what are you doing?” she repeats, squirming a little until she’s on her back, staring up at him. She’s well aware that the way she sleeps is about as attractive as the way she dances, but Garrus doesn’t need to be rude and say it out loud.

 

He smirks a little and claws a loose few strands of hair back behind her ear. “Trying to learn Spanish so I can figure out what you and Vega and Cortez are talking about all the time.”

 

“You could just update your translator.”

 

“That would be an invasion of privacy.” Garrus’s voice is dryly and faintly colored with mock horror. “I would never. If I’m going to invade your privacy, I’m damn well going to do it myself, not pay someone else to do it for me.”

 

“You can’t afford it, can you?”

 

“My boss is a cheapskate,” he murmurs, leaning down to press his forehead to hers. It sets a tingle off over her skin, and she shivers a little.

 

They’re mostly quiet again for a few minutes. Raffi is content to stay there and stare at the TV, occasionally interjecting when a translation doesn’t quite match or if she just thinks there’s a better, more colorful way to say whatever it is.

 

“It’s mostly you, just so you know,” she adds casually after a little while, unable or unwilling to pass up an opportunity to needle Garrus a little. “We’re usually talking about you.”

 

“Should I be flattered or terrified?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“Fantastic.”

 

“James has a lot of questions about how things… work. Between us. Steve is generally there to tell him to shut up, which- you know, it doesn’t work, but I do appreciate the effort.”

 

Garrus just stares down at her for a second, and Raffi beams brightly back up at him.

 

“I’m just going to operate under the assumption that that’s a joke. If I’m wrong, don’t you dare tell me, Shepard. But I do still have plenty of vids I could share if Vega’s actually curious. I’ll just set up a dead drop, and we’ll never speak of it again.”

 

“Don’t give him porn.”

 

“It’s not  _ porn _ , it’s educational.”

 

“I’ve seen your vids. There’s a fine line between business and pleasure getting walked in some of those. And James talks a big game, but if he gets into your ‘research,’ he will never look me in the eye again.”

 

“His loss,” Garrus murmurs, and this time there’s a kiss, and this time there’s a full body shudder, something like a chill, only the exact opposite.

 

And maybe it’s the apartment, or the Citadel, or shore leave, or just Garrus in general, but whatever it is, it sets her off thinking again.

 

Would it be like this, she wonders suddenly, if they weren’t who they were? If they hadn’t built this on friendship, on sarcasm, on so much unshakable trust? If they’d just…  _ met _ , met like any other people would meet in a restaurant, in a bar, would they become the very picture of domestic boredom? Would they be together at all? Is it their circumstances, their very particular history that’s made this what it is, or is there just something about Shepard and Vakarian that would set off explosions no matter who or where they were?

 

She can’t picture it. She tries briefly, but it doesn’t feel right. Sometimes what they’ve got feels almost dangerously fragile, sometimes when Garrus is walking on eggshells around her, but she knows in her heart that he’s not going to break her, and that no one could break  _ this _ . And it feels like he’s finally starting to learn that, too. But that trust and that certainty, that unthinking ability to leap into the goddamn abyss with the unflappable knowledge that they’ll catch each other? Raffi doesn’t think that’s normal. Or maybe it is. Maybe she just doesn’t know a damn thing about relationships. That’s almost certainly true; Garrus is her first real one. There had been sex before, sure, but she went about that with no more attachment or excitement than she’d feel about a trip to the med bay. That’s what it used to be. Clinical stress relief. And then there had been Kaidan, which had gone… well, “poorly” is an understatement. Raffi is grateful and amazed that they’re still friends.

 

And then Garrus. 

 

She’d thought it was going to be more clinical stress relief. 

 

She never could have anticipated  _ this _ .

 

How could anything else have ever gotten them here? And what would she be like if they’d never made it?

 

Raffi doesn’t expect this to be more than a fleeting thought, so she’s more than a little surprised when Garrus’s voice snaps her back from wherever it was she’d floated off to.

 

“Feel like sharing whatever it is that’s making your eyes go crossed?”

 

“I’m not cross-eyed. Jerk.”

 

“Uh-huh. Okay.”

 

“My eyes are great, okay?”

 

“I never said they weren’t, sweetheart.”

 

“They’re good enough to make me a better shot than you.”

 

“Hey, now. I think that’s what you people call ‘fighting words.’ I’m up for a rematch if you are.”

 

Garrus is prepared to let it go; Raffi knows that, and she’s overcome with gratitude for just a second. She’s not too obtuse to realize how lucky she is to have a partner that can read between her lines. She doesn’t have to say a word. 

 

So she can’t explain why she does.

 

“What do you… I don’t know. This is stupid,” she mutters, sitting up abruptly and going about the automatic, soothing process of smoothing her hair back and wrapping it into a tight bun.

 

Garrus watches her - her eyes are planted on the floor but even if she couldn’t see him out of the corner of her eye, she’d be able to feel him - and cocks his head to the side. “You want to talk, we can talk. You don’t want to talk, we can go get lunch at the second-best restaurant on the Citadel that can actually serve both of us food we’d want to eat. You know. Since you-”

 

“Yeah, yeah, since I broke the best one, I know,” Raffi grumbles. She shrugs, fidgets, picks at her fingernails, doesn’t look at Garrus, and he just waits. Patient and present. “It really is stupid,” she says finally, as softly as she’s ever spoken before, but it carries. “I just- I don’t know. I was thinking. About us, you know? Who we are as people, as friends, as… more than that. And I was just thinking… I mean, what if we hadn’t met the way we did? What if we hadn’t gone through all the crap we’ve gone through together? Would this be different? Would we be who we are?”

 

When he doesn’t respond immediately, she snorts a little and moves to stand. “I told you it was goddamn stupid.”

 

He grabs her arm and tugs her back before she gets more than a step or two away from the couch. She stumbles a little and plops back down, hard, with an automatic “ow” even though it doesn’t come close to hurting (it’s a couch cushion on her butt, and she’s died before, for God’s sake).

 

“Hey.”

 

“You can say that it’s stupid. Just this once, I won’t write you up for insubordination.”

 

“What if I don’t think it’s stupid?”

 

“Then you’re lying to make me feel better.”

 

Garrus snorts. “Please. When have I ever done that?”

 

“Point.”

 

She reluctantly lets him half-haul her into his lap - they might move like dancers on the battlefield, but a graceful couple, they are not - until she’s draped across him and her head is resting on the arm of the couch. Only then does she let herself silently admit that maybe Garrus isn’t the only one still working through a whole lot of insecurity when it comes to the two of them. Maybe he just does it a little more openly - a little better - than she does.

 

“I really don’t know what to say here, Raf,” he says thoughtfully after almost a full minute. “I mean, I know I never thought about looking at a human that way until I met you, but… I don’t know. Maybe a bond formed over vigilante justice and constantly being told you’re wrong by people who don’t know what they’re talking about is an especially romantic one. I think it’s more likely that you’re just special, though.”

 

It’s a little bit of honesty, a little bit of romance, and a little bit of the Garrus Vakarian dry sass that she’s come to expect, to love. It’s perfectly  _ them _ , and it sends a little flurry of something warm through her stomach and up her spine. There really is something special about the two of them. She can feel it in her bones, and hearing him agree puts her a little more at ease. So she wriggles back a bit, sliding off of Garrus and sandwiching herself between his side and the edge of the couch as she stretches her legs out across him. She’s learned the hard way that trying to sit comfortably in Garrus’s lap is an exercise in Spanish curses, bruised tailbones, and complete futility.

 

“So shit-talking the Council didn’t fan the flame any?” she teases.

 

“Well. It might’ve.”

 

“That was all your fault, you know. I never would’ve dreamed of speaking to an authority figure like that until I met you.”

 

“Sorry for being a bad influence,” Garrus says, deadpan.

 

“I’m glad you were. If all I did was blindly follow orders, we’d probably all be dead by now.”

 

“I do prefer the rebellious Commander Shepard anyway.”

 

She grins up at him. “So if we were to just randomly meet for the first time tomorrow in a bar, I’d have to start a brawl or beat some merc twice my size in a drinking game to get your attention?”

 

“Possibly. I’d probably just have to hope that the battle scar and subvocal combo would get you going. Think that would be enough?”

 

An idea jolts through Raffi’s brain, cutting through the easy banter with a speed and intensity that sends her eyebrows up into her hairline. It’s a really stupid idea, in her opinion. It’s a really, really stupid idea, and she is absolutely dying to do it, which is generally how she feels about most of her incredibly stupid ideas.

 

Usually she has the common sense and enough of a sense of responsibility to talk herself out of them.

 

“What’s that face for?”

 

But everything feels different here. So not this time. This time, she doesn’t even try.

 

“Want to find out?”

 

\----------

 

Stupid,  _ stupid _ idea.

 

They agreed to “meet” at the bar on Friday, but Raffi hasn’t seen Garrus for more than ten waking minutes since that discussion. He spends most of his days out and about, though she’s not sure where. She tries waiting up for him, but she always ends up passing out before he makes it back in. And when she wakes up and sees him next to her, she doesn’t have the heart to poke him and demand to know what the hell is going on. First of all, shaking active military personnel awake is a good way to get shot. And second of all, this is probably the best sleep any of them has had in a very long time, and Raffi isn’t quite selfish enough to take that from him. She knows he’s planning something, because he seems to be avoiding her when they pass each other, and he looks as shifty as a dextro can look, but she doesn’t know  _ what _ , and it’s driving her absolutely nuts.

 

So she keeps herself busy, tearing from one activity to the next, running herself pretty close to ragged until James literally picks her up as she’s passing him on her way out of the apartment and tosses her over his shoulder.

 

“Do you  _ mind _ ?” she barks, glaring at the ground as he walks her calmly back into the apartment.

 

“You’re gonna kill yourself running around like a hamster in a cage, Lola,” he says, and she can hear the dumb, smug grin in his dumb, smug voice. “You need to sit down and breathe and spend some time with  _ la gente _ , okay?”

 

“I have to go buy party supplies. Now.”

 

“Oh yeah, God forbid we don’t have enough streamers or what the fuck ever. That’ll just ruin the whole damn thing.”

 

She has to dig her thumbs into his kidneys before he finally puts her down in front of the bar. Steve is already standing behind it, staring at both of them with a raised eyebrow. 

 

“Kidnapping wasn’t part of the plan, Mr. Vega.”

 

James hold his hands out, half shrug and half  _ what the hell was I supposed to do?  _ “She’s all tiny and aerodynamic and shit. She starts running, she’s gone before I can say ‘hey, come grab a beer.’”

 

“ _ She _ is right here,” Raffi snaps, only partially feigning irritation, and it’s then that she realizes that they’ve all transitioned into Spanish. She has to admit that Garrus has a point with his comment - this does tend to happen with the three of them. Raffi isn’t sure what James and Steve’s reasons for it are; she’s not even sure if they have reasons. Maybe they just do because they want to, and they can. Maybe they like having something that’s just theirs, just for the three of them and the walls of the armory. Or maybe there’s some panging nostalgia there for the boys, too, because Raffi knows she hasn’t consistently spoken colloquial Spanish with another person since Mindoir - since her  _ mother _ , specifically - a thousand lifetimes and countless deaths ago.

 

There’s some semblance of peace, of  _ family _ , there for her, there in those words. Maybe that’s why she thinks of those two as her brothers.

 

Steve slides an open beer down the bar towards her. She snatches it and takes a long gulp, wandering to the couch and slumping down onto it with a quiet groan as her legs suddenly send a throbbing ache up towards her pelvis. It’s been a quirk of her body’s since she was a kid; exhaustion leads to sharp, shooting pains in her legs that nothing but sleep seems to quiet. Raffi hadn’t realized how exhausted she was until that pain hit; that was sort of the point in keeping her momentum going. Her brain goes on overdrive when the rest of her body is too tired to keep her busy, and she’s really not in the mood to overthink her stupid idea any more than she already has. But what’s done is done, so she may as well do her best to enjoy some downtime with her friends while she has the opportunity.

 

The guys follow her almost immediately, settling down onto either side of her. James finds a sports channel talking biotiball stats and the upcoming game, and for a few seconds, they all sit quietly and listen to the announcers’ playful bickering and laughter. It’s good. It’s comfortable. It gives them all a minute to just  _ be _ .

 

“I thought you could use a sit-down and a cold one,” James says as Raffi kicks her shoes off and tucks her legs up underneath her. “You’ve been running like Reapers are on your ass for days.”

 

“Reapers  _ are _ on my ass,” she reminds him darkly before she can stop herself. “Reapers are on all of our asses.”

 

“Come on, guys,” Steve chides gently. “One week. Just one week where we take a break from trying to put out every fire in the universe. Can we have just the one?”

 

“I’m trying,” Raffi assures him. “And I think I’m doing a pretty okay job, if I do say so myself. I’m sitting here with you two dorks. I’m doing normal things like normal people. I put on a  _ dress _ and drank  _ wine _ at a fancy casino with Miranda last night!”

 

“Yeah, she seeing anybody, by the way?”

 

“She would literally flay you alive and make a purse out of your skin.”

 

“I could maybe be into that.”

 

Steve and Raffi trade identical eye rolls.

 

“Speaking of weird shit we’re into, where’s your boyfrie- ow, stop hitting me.”

 

“He’s plotting something,” Raffi murmurs, giving James one last open-palmed smack on the back of the head. “I don’t know what, but there’s definitely something going on that he’s not telling me. And I’m not really at a place in my life where I’m a huge fan of surprises, so I wish he’d just sit his sneaky ass down at tell me what’s happening.”

 

Steve has the audacity to look pleasantly confused and take a slow pull off of his beer before he sets a bomb off in Raffi’s lap.

 

“He’s taking dance lessons. I thought you knew.”

 

Everything goes very quiet very quickly. Time seems to slow down. She vaguely feels like she’s collapsed into the middle of a firefight as several clips’ worth of questions whiz through her mind like bullets. Dance lessons.  _ Dance lessons _ ? Did she mishear him? Is her Spanish getting rusty? Is he messing with her? Is Steve even the type of person to mess with anyone besides James (she thinks she knows the answer to that one, and the answer is no)?

 

It doesn’t take Steve long to realize he’s stepped somewhere he never intended to be.

 

“Shepard-” he begins.

 

“I’m gonna need you to tell me what you know, Steve,” Raffi says, quietly and gently, and that voice might have relaxed someone who didn’t know her quite as well. Steve and James both knew better.

 

He shrugs a little helplessly, and Raffi can tell he’s looking over the top of her head at James, silently asking for an assist. James either ignores him or hasn’t unglued himself from the television; Raffi doesn’t break eye contact with Steve to confirm which, and eventually he sighs and continues. “I… There isn’t much to tell. There’s a dance studio on the lower level with windows across the front. I was walking past, and just happened to look in, and I saw him. That’s all. I thought it was something you two had decided to… work on. You know. Since… well…”

 

“Since turians are born with poles up their asses, and Lola dances like she’s having a seizure?  _ Ow _ , god _ damn _ , Raf, take it easy.”

 

“Are you absolutely certain it was Garrus?” Raffi asks once she’s done knuckling James’s ribs.

 

“I didn’t exactly stop and stare. I had to get back with beer on the double, because  _ someone _ was throwing a tantrum about being out-”

 

“You can’t watch b-ball without beer, Esteban, it’s against the law!”

 

“-but a turian doing the tango with an Asari isn’t something I see every day.”

 

“But it was _ Garrus _ ? Not another turian? I know sometimes- ”

 

The skin around Steve’s eyes tightens almost imperceptibly. But Raffi’s sitting right next to him, and she can feel the rest of him tense up, and she knows immediately she’s made a mistake. “I do know what he looks like, Shepard. And even if I _ was _ as racist as your comment implies, I’d still recognize his targeting visor. That thing is one of a kind, and I’d be surprised if even you’ve seen him without it.”

 

Raffi deflates a little, the dark, freckled skin of her cheeks burning with embarrassment. It had been a shitty thing to insinuate, but her mouth has always moved faster than her brain. “I didn’t mean to… I’m sorry, Steve. That’s not what I meant. I know that’s what came out, but that’s not what I meant. I’m just… surprised. And, to be honest, kind of nervous.”

 

Steve’s face softens, and he gives her shoulder a squeeze, a quick assurance, a gentle reminder that they’re still friends, of course. Of course they’re still friends. Raffi doesn’t have much need for friends that won’t call her out when it’s necessary.

 

“Didn’t think Commander Shepard was allowed to be nervous,” James chimes in, chuckling.

 

Raffi’s smile is wry and tired. “Spread the word. Call Khalisah al-Jilani. I’m sure she’d love to report something about how Commander Shepard is a huge, sniveling coward when it comes to her turian boyfriend. Finally get me back for punching her out.”

 

“You punched out Khalisah al-Jilani?”

 

“It was years ago. I was going through a rough patch.”

 

“Hell of a rough patch, Lola.”

 

“Can I ask what, exactly, you’re nervous about?” Steve asks, redirecting the conversation, reaching over to mute the television.

 

Raffi watches the announcers shake with silent laughter for a few seconds before she sighs. She’s not entirely comfortable with having a conversation about her insecurities. But saying it in Spanish makes it feel a little more like she’s just opening up to her mom, and she’d never had a problem with that. So it comes out a little more easily than she had been expecting. “I’m just… pretty sure it has something to do with this incredibly stupid thing we have planned for Friday, and I don’t know what to do about it.”

 

“What stupid thing?”

 

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

“Oh, do  _ not _ even give me that,” James counters with a snort. “You think we don’t know you? You wouldn’t have brought it up if you didn’t want to talk about it. And if you changed your mind, you’d tell us both where we could stick it; you wouldn’t give us this mopey ‘aw, shucks, I don’t wanna’ bullshit.” He raises a finger before she can interject and points it between her eyes. “And if you smack me for telling the truth, I’m gonna lock your pint-sized ass in the medicine cabinet.”

 

“This isn’t something I say often, but Mr. Vega has a point,” Steve adds, trying to hide a smile. Badly. Very badly.

 

“Up high, Esteban.”

 

Raffi glares at the ground as they high-five over her head.

 

“I hate you both,” she says quietly. She doesn’t even try to sound like she means it, because they’re absolutely right. So she inhales deeply. “Garrus and I are going to meet at a bar,” she blurts before she can change her mind.

 

“Okay?”

 

“Not meet.  _ Meet _ .”

 

“That’s the same word.”

 

“Meet, like we’ve never met before. Like this is the first time we’ve ever talked.”

 

Almost instantly, Raffi wishes she could take it back. Steve’s eyebrows shoot up, and James looks like he’s won the lottery.

 

“Like roleplaying.”

 

“No, no, not really, not like-”

 

“You’re gonna roleplay. You and Vakarian are gonna  _ roleplay _ .”

 

“This isn’t  _ roleplay _ !”

 

“Sounds like it to me.”

 

“This isn’t like-like sexy nurse meets rugged patient or whatever the hell it is that  _ you _ watch, Vega-”

 

“And how do you know what I watch? I mean, don’t get me wrong, you’re pretty spot on there, but was that just a shot in the dark, or-”

 

“We are  _ not _ roleplaying!” Raffi snaps.

 

“Robert and I did something like that once.”

 

Raffi actually hears James’s next crack die in his throat. She hears herself take in a sharp, whistling breath that she doesn’t remember deciding to take. They both settle, they both look to Steve, they both keep their big mouths shut. Steve is better than he was, comparatively, but Robert is still a hard subject and generally not one that gets brought up in casual conversation. Not that Raffi can blame him. She never truly got over losing her family; it’s not all that surprising that Steve wouldn’t either. 

 

“Yeah?” James replies when Steve doesn’t continue, soft and open, inviting only as much more of the conversation as Steve wants to give. For all their quips and jabs, Raffi would have to be blind and stupid not to see how strong of a friendship those two have. It’s fierce, it’s diamond-tough, and frankly, she’s honored to have been invited into it. And even if treading lightly isn’t a thing that James Vega generally puts a lot of stock in, he’s keenly aware of how to do it in this kind of situation. At least when a friend - a brother - is involved.

 

Steve nods slowly. His face is almost blank, with the exception of something spreading on his lips, something almost like a smile but not quite. “Yeah. It was…” He sighs, tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling, huffs out a little laugh. “It was a stupid idea, just like you said. Just a boring married couple pretending to be strangers picking each other up at a dive bar. It was ridiculous. He couldn’t stop laughing. I spilled beer on my new pants. Turned out one of our neighbors was there with his wife, and it sort of killed the immersion. You can’t really pretend you don’t know someone when people are asking you what to bring to your anniversary party.”

 

Raffi isn’t totally sure whether or not it’s okay for her to laugh, so she squeaks out something that sounds more like a cough before she claps a hand over her mouth.

 

“It’s okay,” Steve says, and the almost smile is getting a lot closer to a real smile. “It really is. We came close to pissing ourselves laughing at the time, and it’s… it’s still funny now.” He turns to her, and she swears he’s looking right through her. “It was stupid, and it was hilarious, and at the end of the day, it was nothing like what we thought it would be, and that was okay. That was more than okay. That’s… just what it is. That’s what loving somebody is. Just being there with them, and whatever happens, it doesn't matter as long as they're with you.”

 

Those bright blue eyes suddenly, finally, seem to focus, and he stares right at Raffi with a forehead wrinkled in something that could be concern or fear or sadness or some gut-wrenching combination of all three.

 

“I know I’m breaking my own rule here, but the universe is going to hell, Rafaela,” and dammit, nobody just throws out her full first name for fun, it’s always something heavy and vital and  _ real _ that prompts it. This time is no different. “So just… go. Go and have fun. Quit teasing her, James. Just go and have fun and be stupid and ridiculous and in love, because whatever else is going on right now? You have that. You can do that. So go do it, and let it be whatever it wants to be. Whatever it is, you’ll be with who you love, and that sounds like a win to me.”

 

The room is silent for what feels like a very long time. Raffi takes Steve’s hand. James reaches an arm across behind her head to give the back of Steve’s neck a squeeze. And that’s how they all sit for an indeterminate period of time, more than a second and less than a year, suddenly hit again with the full force of what honestly matters in the face of what’s actually happening.

 

It’s James who speaks first.

 

“You know how to tango, Lola?”

 

Raffi can’t stop the scoffing noise that bursts from her nose and mouth. “Come on, James. You know the answer to that.”

 

“Figured I did.” He pats Steve on the back once more before he hops to his feet and faces the couch with his arm outstretched. “You’re gonna learn.”

 

“I’m what?”

 

“Get up and come here. You’re gonna learn, and I’m gonna teach you.”

 

“ _ You _ know how to tango?”

 

“I know how to do a lot of things. I’m well-rounded and shit. And I stand by what I said before about you dancing like there’s something going wrong in your brain. And at the same time, I know that there ain’t shit you can’t do if you buckle down and put your back into it, so  _ you _ , my friend, are about to learn how to tango. Vakarian thinks he can pull a fast one on my girl with some fancy new moves? I think fucking not. Let’s go, Shepard. We got a counterattack to plan.”

 

They’re both grinning at her, she realizes. James’s smile is full of triumph and mischief and something like determination. Steve looks more… is wistful the word? Maybe. It  _ is _ ridiculous. It  _ is _ stupid.

 

And yeah. The universe  _ is _ going to hell.

 

But she’s not going quietly along. And if it ends up taking her down with it? Okay. Okay, sure. But she’s going to do this thing. She’s going to take one night,  _ one fucking night _ , to drop everything people think she is, to put all of the insecurities she rarely acknowledges aside. To just be ridiculous and stupid and in love.

 

So she matches their grins with her own, and hers is wild, and hers is a challenge waiting for whatever is out there to take it, and she grabs James’s hand.

 

\----------

 

It goes almost precisely according to plan, which is not what Raffi had planned at all.

 

When she first sees James skulking in the corner, she’s almost  _ paralyzed _ , she’s so livid. But when he acknowledges her quietly with a head pop and a thumbs up and doesn’t move, she quickly realizes that it’s less about overprotective spying or brotherly sabotage and more about moral support. Raffi’s quietly grateful for that, because a couple of days of impromptu lessons in the apartment hasn’t exactly made her an expert. But seeing him and remembering what her feet are supposed to do reminds her that James had been right - there’s nothing she can’t do when she sets her mind to it, and that includes the goddamn tango. Is she perfect? Definitely not. Is she going to fall on her face? Not likely.

 

Is she going to shock the hell out of Garrus Vakarian? Almost certainly.

 

So she flashes James a thumbs up back and leans casually against the bar to wait.

 

And Garrus  _ had _ planned it all, the sneaky little shit. He’d planned on dragging her onto the dance floor with no prior notice, and what? Hoping she didn’t trip and break something they couldn’t afford to replace? Not the most solid plan Garrus has ever formulated. Luckily, he has her to help him out. The plans they hatch together are generally much better than anything either of them can come up with on their own.

 

His stance doesn’t change much when she straightens up in her too-tall heels and takes charge, but she can feel the surprise rolling off of him like waves on a beach. She can feel him misstep once, twice, a third time, but she’s done the same thing twice as often. It just hasn’t been particularly noticeable to the crowd that’s started surrounding them and staring. She manages not to actually say “no shit” out loud when he murmurs that he’s been taking lessons on the side. And when James steps in for an impromptu assist… well. That’s the closest either of them comes to falling as Garrus trips over his own feet in his gusto to yank her back into him.

 

It’s a truly great night.

 

It only gets better later.

 

It’s very late, and they’re very naked and very exhausted, and Raffi is very much incapable of holding back her laughter any more.

 

“Your-Your  _ face _ when I went over to James, oh my God, that-that,” and she’s dissolved into giggles again, her cackling bouncing off the walls even through the pillow she’s buried her face into.

 

“Uh-huh, laugh it up, Shepard,” Garrus murmurs, tugging the pillow off of her face and tossing it to the floor. “You caught me off guard, all right? I can admit to being a little off balance there, in more way than one.”

 

She retrieves her pillow from the floor, still biting her lip to keep the worst of the snickers at bay, and fluffs it before dropping it back into place. “I could tell. Your footwork was off.”

 

“With all due respect, sweetheart, I’ve seen you dance. How in the hell did you learn… whatever it is you did tonight?”

 

She shrugs nonchalantly, actually looks at her nails - they’re painted for maybe the first time in her life, but the paint’s already starting to chip, so she knows she’ll be biting them off again in no time. “Same way you did. Lessons. Which, by the way, you should have told me about so I could be prepared. I mean, I  _ knew _ . And I  _ was  _ prepared. But still, that’s no thanks to you, and you’re kind of a jerk.”

 

He cocks his head just slightly to the side. “Ah. You, ah. You found out about that, huh?”

 

“Cortez saw you. You can’t hide from  _ la gente _ .”

 

“Can’t a guy surprise his girlfriend?”

 

“The girlfriend appreciates the guy’s intent, but she probably would’ve preferred something she’s not so obviously terrible at, somewhere that wasn’t the most public place on the Citadel.” But she’s smiling, and he knows she’s more amused than anything else. “Did you have a good teacher?””

 

“Kesa’ila Hedri. She knew what she was talking about, but I'm a turian. Phrases like ‘let your feet flow like the waters of a gentle stream, now let them take charge as the current strengthens’ don't really compute with me. Who taught you?”

 

“James.”

 

“Vega? The human Mako can tango?”

 

“I was just as surprised as you are, trust me. He acted like he was my drill instructor. Don't tell anyone I took orders from Vega. I'll never live it down.”

 

“Your secret’s safe with me.”

 

They lapse into a comfortable silence, and Raffi feels heavy and languid, like strands of sleep have already started threading themselves though her muscles. She wriggles closer to Garrus, carefully easing a leg and an arm across his body, and moves her pillow to his chest, smacking it a few times before she burrows her face into it. It’s taken a lot of trial and error to find positions that actually let them sleep  _ with _ each other, not just in the same vicinity. Raffi has suffered through a lot of brush burns and strangely-shaped bruises, and Garrus has muscled through some pretty severe cramps, but they’re nothing if not committed. It’s not the easiest thing in the world, but they’re used to it now, and Raffi wouldn’t trade it for anything. Besides, the look on Traynor’s face as she very, very obviously stares at the bruises on Raffi’s neck and cheeks while trying to look like she’s not staring honestly tickles Raffi more than she thought it would.

 

Though not all of those bruises are technically from position-shift errors. Jack hadn’t been wrong with her crack about biting.

 

“You know, it’s lucky Steve found out what you were doing,” she mutters, yawning into the pillow. He’s started scratching her head, and it’s no secret that that’s her weakness, and it’s no secret that no one is as good at it as Garrus is. It’s the talons, she assumes. The talons and the “so utterly in love, you can’t breathe or walk straight” thing. “If I hadn’t been taking secret lessons, too? That could have been a disaster.”

 

“Nah.”

 

“Yeah,” she counters. “I’m a klutz. I would’ve fallen on my face.”

 

“Never. I would’ve caught you.”

 

It’s just a simple response to a silly comment, but a lump suddenly forms in the back of her throat. The context doesn’t make it less true. Of course he would catch her. He would always catch her.

 

She thinks back to the conversation she had with Steve and James, about being stupid and ridiculous and in love. She wonders how many more nights like this they have before whatever it is that’s going to happen finally happens. Before everything changes in whatever way it’s going to change. Because it’s going to. That much is obvious. The only variable is how.

 

And who’s going to be around to see it.

 

“The universe is going to hell,” she hears herself say softly, muffled by her mouth in the pillow.

 

He's her rock, so it doesn’t surprise her when he doesn’t falter at the out-of-place comment. “Yeah, gorgeous. It is.”

 

“Still planning on loving me when everything is on fire?”

 

She means it as a joke, sort of. A throwaway. But he doesn’t respond, and when she cranes her neck up at him, he’s staring down at her with an expression she has no hope of reading.

 

“When you barged back into my life, Palaven was burning. My home was on fire, my friends were dying, I didn’t know what had happened to my family, and even with all of that, the second I saw you, it was some of the most… just the most intense relief I’d ever felt in my life. I knew I cared about you before. I knew we had something special going on, but I didn’t know what it was. Not exactly. And right then, right at that moment… that’s probably when I realized I was in love with you.” Raffi isn’t breathing, and Garrus isn’t looking away. “So. Raffi. If I can fall in love with you standing on the ashes of my planet, I don’t think it’s going to change if the rest of the galaxy burns down, too.”

 

She has absolutely no response for that. Even if she’d been able to string the right words together - which she would  _ not _ have been able to do - she wouldn’t have been able to gather the breath to say them. She still can’t decipher the look on his face, and he still isn’t looking away, so she just arcs herself up to kiss him the best she can. It’s not the neatest or the prettiest kiss, but it’s fierce and so intense it just about burns her mouth, and she’s pretty sure that she just nicked her lip on one of his teeth, and she just hopes that it conveys everything she’s feeling. Everything that what he just said means to her.

 

Which is, quite simply,  _ everything _ .

 

“And then you shook my hand,” she reminds him, laughing a little as she blinks back tears, settling back onto her pillow.

 

He laughs with her, soft, and resumes scratching her head, his talons buried in the tangled mess of her thick, brown hair. “And then I shook your hand,” he agrees. “We talked about this. I was trying to follow protocol. And I didn’t want to make any assumptions about how you felt about me.”

 

“Yeah, well. From now on, I formally invite you to make whatever assumptions you want. And now you know what reunion protocol is, at least where I’m concerned.”

 

“Too bad I won’t get to test it out again, since I’m not planning on ever going far enough away to need to.”

 

“Cheeseball. Now you’re just trying to charm me.”

 

“Is it working?”

 

“Pretty much perfectly. If I’d been wearing pants, they’d be charmed off.”

 

“Mission accomplished.”

 

They’re both teetering on the edge of real sleep before she says anything else. She hadn’t planned on speaking up again, but her mouth really does do stupid things when she’s exhausted.

 

Stupid, ridiculous, lovely things.

 

“I’m crap at telling you that I love you, Garrus,” she says, whispers, because even though there’s no one else in the room, no one anywhere near them, part of her wants to make absolutely certain that this is just theirs. She’s not ashamed, she’s not embarrassed. She’s more proud of Garrus than she could ever put into words. But she’s a woman with a very public life that wants something this good and this beautiful to just stay private. She wants one more thing that’s just for her. And for Garrus. “I really am. I’m total crap. But I really do love you.”

 

She feels him shift, hears his quiet laugh echo just the tiniest bit. “You don’t have to say it. If you ever quit showing me, we might have to have a talk, but somehow, I get the feeling I’m not going to have to worry about that.”

 

And then she feels the slightest pressure of his forehead against the top of her head and the quietest “I love you, too.”

 

That’s how sleep finally takes them both, sprawled across each other with his hand in her hair. And right before she drifts off, Raffi thinks that if she does go down in flames with the rest of the galaxy, this moment right here is the memory she’s taking with her.

**Author's Note:**

> Idk y'all I never thought I would write fanfic again, but I love Raffi so goddamn much. Shleemaree on tumblr. I yell about Bioware, Fallout, various other video games, and intersectional feminism. I want to yell with you about things we both like.


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